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Performance Management System

Notes The scorecard puts strategy and vision, not control, at the centre. It establishes goals but assumes
that people will adopt whatever behaviours and take whatever actions are necessary to arrive at
those goals. The measures are designed to pull people toward the overall vision. Senior managers
may know what the end result should be, but they cannot tell employees exactly how to achieve
that result, because the conditions in which employees operate are constantly changing.
This new approach to performance measurement is consistent with the initiatives under way in
many organisation: cross-functional integration, customer supplier partnerships, global scale,
continuous improvement, and team rather than individual accountability. By combining the
financial, customer, internal process and innovation, and organizational learning perspectives,

the balanced scorecard helps managers understand, at least implicitly, many interrelationships.
This understanding can help managers transcend traditional notions about functional barriers
and ultimately lead to improved decision-making, problem-solving and enhanced performance.
The balanced scorecard keeps organisations moving forward.
6.6 Assessment Centre

An assessment centre is a comprehensive, standardized procedure in which multiple assessment
techniques such as situational exercises and job simulation (Business games, discussions,
reports and presentations) are used to evaluate individual employees for a variety of decisions.
Most frequently the approach has been applied to individuals being considered for selection,
promotion, placement or special training and development in management.
Promotion

A decision to promote is essentially a decision to select from within the organization those most
likely to succeed at higher level jobs. Any method used by the organization to take promotion
decisions such as performance appraisal data, interviews, etc. should be supplemented by data
from the assessment centre. Since, the assessment centre method is used to study the likely
performance and behavior of a person in a role not previously performed by him/her; it can
be used to supplement promotion decisions. Using additional inputs not only results in a more
appropriate decision, it also helps eliminate individual biases and imparts more transparency
and fairness to the promotion system. High validity has been reported in use of assessment

centre data for promotions to first level supervisory and middle management levels; while no
validity studies have been reported for higher levels of management.

Tools used in Assessment Centres

As mentioned above, the main characteristics of assessment centres are multiple methods of
assessment using multiple assessors. The main assessment tools that are used are:

Psychometric Tests

In general three types of tests or questionnaires can be used in assessment centres: aptitude tests,
ability tests and personality tests. Aptitude tests are those which attempt to evaluate verbal and
numerical reasoning ability. Ability tests attempt to measure awareness. Knowledge and other
such aspects. They also measure simple skills like problem solving ability, etc. For e.g., a chapter

pencil test could be administered to find out the familiarity or level of skill of the individual in

relation to computer literacy, financial management skills, etc. Personality tests are those tests
which are aimed at studying various dimensions of personality rather than the ability. MBTI and
16 PF are tests used in many organizations. While ability and aptitude tests have right or wrong
answers, personality tests do not have the same.

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